Say yes to huckleberries, yes to lazy days by the lake, yes to fast bikes on long trails.Say no to fancy French pronunciation. Say no, also, to white supremacy. And say no, thank you, to the Rocky Mountain oysters at the Snake Pit restaurant east of town, unless you like bull testicles.Follow this simple advice, and you'll probably do just fine here in the middle of the Idaho panhandle, where the lakeside city of Coeur d'Alene (pronounced core-DA-lane) draws travelers and second-homers from all over the West.At the docks, you can catch a ride to the golf course, take a 90-minute cruise on Coeur d'Alene Lake, hop on a float plane or rent a kayak. At McEuen Field, a youth baseball diamond between the main drag and the lake, you can sit in the bleachers, munch on a $2 hot dog from the snack shack, then stroll down to the water's edge or up to the Moose Lounge for a cold one. At the Wolf Lodge Steakhouse on the eastern end of town, you and your beloved can share a ounce sirloin steak.Now that I've spent a few days here, I have an idea why many Southern Californians including more than a few Los Angeles cops have retired to northern Idaho, why so many travelers arrive every summer -- and why some stay away. Whenever somebody starts talking about "the light at the end of the tunnel," I'll think of Idaho for reasons I'll explain in a minute.The hub of action in Coeur d'Alene is the lakefront, where the 18-story Coeur d'Alene Golf & Spa Resort rises next to City Park. On a grassy expanse here, the Rotarians and the Kiwanis appear to be locked in a vicious struggle over who can provide more benches, playground structures and bandstand improvements. Wooden lifeguard towers overlook a family-friendly beach. Float planes, cruise boats and a gaggle of rental watercraft line the dock, and a sculpted moose stands sentinel at Independence Point, where local teens like to sunbathe and practice their slouches.Every few hours, though, the sun or the scenery overcomes one of them, usually a boy. He'll slowly back up, like a gymnast preparing for a floor exercise, then rush forward, hurl himself through the air, soaring over the concrete steps and the stenciled letters saying, then splash down into the water. They do the same from nearby Tubbs Hill, but from boulders and cliffs.Maybe the water exerts some sort of gravitational pull. The lake stretches south for miles and fills with all sorts of pleasure craft in the summer. Hiking and biking paths are threaded around its miles of shoreline.The city of Coeur d'Alene (population about is neatly spread around the resort. The lakefront area's main drag, Sherman Avenue, is peppered with restaurants, a few motels and numerous galleries, including several that focus on glass art and Western art.Apparently, Coeur d'Alene's name comes from the early days of interaction between this area's Indians and the French-speaking traders who eventually showed up. As this story goes, the American Indians were tough traders, so a settler concluded, in French, that these bargainers had "the heart" of an awl.Tastes are conservative here. The city is about white, and the county, Kootenai, voted for John McCain. Over the years, there have been some whose politics have fallen beyond the Democrat-Republican spectrum. One of the nation's most notorious white supremacists had his clubhouse just outside town for three decades, until nine years ago, when neighbors and lawyers shut him down. For more on that, see sidebar: Once home to Aryan Nations, northern Idaho makes progress. I kept an eye out on Sherman Avenue for hints of those troubles, but in four days I never saw any. Instead, I kept seeing signs that Coeur d'Alene, with its growing trade in tourism and second homes, could begin to look a little bit like Sun Valley, at least in summer. If the clocks around here once seemed stuck in 1959, they're ticking now.The resort, the pound gorilla of tourism around the lake, opened in the 1960s, then expanded in the . And then in it added a widely admired golf course with a floating 14th hole. You see lots of expensive boats in the hotel marina, including one that carries guests to the golf course. You get spectacular views from the hotel's upper floors, including from the fancy Beverly's restaurant.Whether you stay in a resort room or a motel room (as I did, at the Resort City Inn), it's easy enough to pass a summer's day: If you're not golfing or fishing, you're on a lake cruise boat, on the beach, paddling in a kayak or dangling a few hundred feet above the lake on a parasailing ride.To get lunch or get out of the sun, you walk up to Sherman Avenue. And if it's a Wednesday afternoon in summer, there will be a little farmers market at 5th Street.Instead of spuds, it's huckleberries that show up everywhere, in pies, smoothies, beer, ice cream and more. Beginning late this month, they usually start appearing at the Kootenai County Farmers Market, alongside the smoked meat, organic soap, organic tofu and organic hummus.The afternoon when I browsed, many shoppers showed up on bikes -- not surprising considering the growing network of trails around town. The North Idaho Centennial Trail carries nonmotorized traffic miles west from Higgins sometimes spelled HiggensPoint on Coeur d'Alene Lake to the Washington line (then goes on more miles under the name Spokane River Centennial Trail. The Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes, another paved path for nonmotorized riders, runners and skaters, was completed in It runs miles along an old rail route between the towns of Mullan and Plummer. The federal Environmental Protection Agency, eager to seal old mining byproducts below the asphalt, was key in creating the trail.In winter, the area draws skiers to Silver Mountain Resort minutes east in Kellogg and Schweitzer Mountain Resort minutes north in Sandpoint For the last several years, the summer calendar has been highlighted by the Ironman triathlon and the Car d'Lane auto show, both in June, and a downtown street fair, restaurant showcase and art-on-the-green festival, which fall between Friday and Aug. this year.Besides the resort course, many golfers hit the Circling Raven and StoneRidge courses nearby. Many families leave room in their itineraries for Silverwood, the biggest theme park in the Pacific Northwest, miles north of town.One thing Coeur d'Alene doesn't offer, at least so far, is desperate recession discounting.Dani Zibell-Wolfe, vice president for tourism at the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce, in mid-June reported that hotel occupancy was running less than behind last year.In tumultuous times, maybe old-school American atmosphere sells better. Surely that should please John and Tina Hough, owners of the Roosevelt Inn. Their four-story bed-and-breakfast began life as a red-brick school in and remained an active campus until 1971. In fact, John Hough attended grade school there. Now, most of the rooms are named after former teachers, and the halls are lined with old class photos.The same day I checked out the Roosevelt Inn, I wound up on one of the Tubbs Hill trails, shooting the breeze with the Holt family as they lazed and clowned on a big rock.She's trying to catch some fish. But the fish are jacking her worms," said Dallas Holt, , giggling, as his stepmother, Tiesha Holt, cast and cast again.Coeur d'Alene was looking pretty good, and I was already imagining the Fourth of July fireworks. But to appreciate this territory properly, you can't just stand and stare.Think like a train," said the man in the Lookout Pass bike-rental shop, handing me a map.I was about miles east of Coeur d'Alene, in the Bitterroot Mountains on the Idaho-Montana line. My rented bike and rack in place, I drove up an unpaved mountain road to the mouth of a railway tunnel. Ministers moved to quell swine flu hysteria last night, as concerns grew that the National Health Service might be overwhelmed by hordes of "unnecessarily anxious" people who could make a full recovery at home.Amid rising government worry about how NHS staff will cope as the virus spreads, health secretary Andy Burnham warned that panic itself could push services to breaking point. Health Department officials said there was a danger of a "panic pandemic" that could hinder the treatment of more serious cases.Calling for calm, Burnham said that although swine flu presented a huge challenge for the country, it was not a life-threatening condition for the vast majority of peopleHe told the Observer that it was vital not to over-react and claimed the government had the situation under control. "It is very important for everybody to keep a sense of perspective," he said. "It has been a mild virus in the vast majority of cases, with relatively mild symptoms from which people recover fully fairly quickly.If people are made unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already under enormous pressure, far more difficult as people become unduly worried.He added: "People should be assured that we have been planning our response to a pandemic for a long time."Health officials are also concerned at rising levels of fear among parents who know that children are particularly susceptible to the irus.Doctors last night tried to reassure families that the vast majority of young people would get better without a visit to their surgery or a hospital.Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. said: "Health services struggle when they are overwhelmed by people who don't need to be there.Our first message to parents of young children is to keep this in perspective and keep calm. There are 11 million children in England and of them are in hospital [with swine flu]. For the four families where children have died, it is an absolute tragedy, but if you are talking about a previously healthy child where swine flu has led to their death, there have been none.Last Thursday, the Health Protection Agency said that consultation rates had risen sharply in the past week, with children under the worst affected group. The overs continued to show a much slower rate. The HPA estimated that there had been cases in England in the past week. Overall, people have died. Department of Health spokesman said that last week's launch of a helpline for sufferers had already eased pressure on surgeries. Figures released last night showed that the service enabled people to receive antivirals on its first day of operation. Some people used the service, of whom used the self-assessment scheme on the internet.Burnham said: "People in need of antivirals are able to get them quickly and conveniently using the new service, and it is freeing up GPs to look after patients in risk groups as well as those with other illnesses."He made it clear that he was angry with Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, for criticising his decision to delay the setting up of the helpline. Lansley described it as too little, too late Burnham said the comment was "unhelpful" and insisted that doctors had urged him to hold back from setting up the line until H1N1 had spread more widely.Burnham also pointed out that, over the past years, there had been around flu deaths a year in England and Wales.Meanwhile, ministers afraid of stoking more "crisis" headlines - refused to be drawn on whether Parliament would have to be recalled if the number of cases continued to escalate at the same rate, or on whether the country had sufficient intensive care beds.Although Stephenson moved to reassure parents, he said contingency plans were in place. These included plans to move children into intensive care beds meant for adults. The NHS has intensive care beds for children and for adults. also said that hospitals could increase recruitment, while cancelling planned admissionsProfessor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of, that too many people who were not unwell were turning up at surgeries: "There's too much preoccupation with the threat of death. The numbers of people getting influenza are still tiny. The reality is, that for most people it's a basically mild illness, and we are losing sight of that."Field argued that it was crucial for there to be no unnecessary pressure on GPs or hospitals, partly because they needed to prepare for later in the year. "This is almost like the phoney war at the moment," he said. "The big danger and real threat is that there will be a big spike in the numbers of people with influenza in the autumn.People should regard the phase we're in now as a practice for far more people having it over a sustained period of a few weeks in the autumn. If that happens, we will have learned valuable lessons from what we're doing now."It looked dark in there.For decades, this was the route of the Olympian and Olympian Hiawatha passenger trains running between Chicago and Seattle-Tacoma. The trains stopped operating about 1980. In the late 1990s, workers hauled away nearly miles of tracks. Just like that, a mountain-bike trail was born.
No comments:
Post a Comment